this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2024
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I know I'm probably not changing your mind on this but interested in how you would want the system to be? Regarding your point about being able to rotate the clock so it matches the local solar cycle, suppose we're in a place where we have 13, at the top of the clock, because that's when midnight is where we are.
And let's say it's Wednesday 3rd April today. What happens when the clock reaches 13? After 1 second elapses, does your local clock go from Wednesday 3rd April 12:59:59 to...
a) Wednesday 3rd April 13:00:00 b) Thursday 4th April 13:00:00
If a) then you have the problem that the date change is now in the middle of the day, and most of the time you can't even say "what day is it today". (If 13:00 is midnight, then 00:00, when the date would roll over, would be just before noon.) You have to say today is "Wednesday/Thursday, or "3rd/4th April" because when you wake up it's Wednesday, but after lunch it becomes Thursday.
If b) then you have the problem where it may be Thursday 4th April 13:00:00 where you live, but actually it's not midnight yet somewhere else and so simultaneously it's Wednesday 3rd April 13:00:00 there. And in fact every location has their own time at which the date rolls over and it's not even possible to interpret a timestamp unless you have a table that tells you when midnight is for each location.
Maybe you feel that one or both of these are not really big enough of a problem, or maybe you can think of some other way of dealing with this that I haven't thought of. And yeah, both of these issues sort of happen already with timezones -- the issue in a) happens if you stay up past midnight, but at least it always happens at midnight at not when most people are awake and doing their business. The issue in b) sort of happens already since it can be Wednesday in one place and Thursday in another, but at least the timestamp would always indicate how many hours past the date rollover it is.
Thank you! Drives me up the wall that when people suggest this and they haven't thought it through, and that it might make other things worse.
I'd say for everyday usability, what we have is way better. Sure, you deal with timezones, but at least once you know what time it is there you have a good sense of what part of the day they are in.
Currently you look up the timezone, maybe do some maths (but let's be real, you just search and get given the time) and then you immediately have a good sense of what the time is there, oh cool it's 7AM.
If we all had the same timezone: you look it up, and then you HAVE to do maths. Why? Oh their midnight is 8, and it's 15 now, so 7 hours after midnight.
Your mind immediately has gone to oh it's 7AM, but NO, in this new reality, it's 15:00 everywhere and where you live midnight is 14:00, so that means where you live it would be like your 21:00.
No matter what time you pick to anchor what time of day that place is, the problem persists. And now you just have replaced the problem of looking up timezones, with looking up when the sun is at some point, and then needing to convert that to get a sense of what time it is there according to the sun.
This would be shit, when you get to a new country when travelling you have to relearn what the numbers "feel" like.
Let's just keep what we have, this is a solved problem.
I'm quite confused as to how you're actually proposing the time should work. I assume that when we talk about abolishing timezones, we mean that everyone switches to a single standard timezone (and that it still goes from 00:00 - 23:59). Are you saying that you would like:
a) The date-rollover point to happen at local solar midnight (i.e. 12 hours past when the sun is highest in the sky in your location, or roughly that), regardless of what the time actually is
b) The date-rollover point to happen at 00:00 standard time, but most people still wake up and go to sleep roughly around when the sun rises and sets
c) The date-rollover point to happen at 00:00 standard time, but most people wake up at roughly 07:00 (for the sake of argument, it could just be any standard time) and go to sleep roughly 22:00, regardless of where the sun is at those times
d) Some other scenario that I didn't think of?
Maybe I suck at reading comprehension but I can't tell which system you're advocating for. I'm also confused when you give the example "15:00 on the 7th literally isn’t a time that can exist", because however your system works, surely if 15:00 on the 8th is a time that you can refer to, then 15:00 on the 7th is just the time 24 hours before that? (I'm actually just very confused by your scenario. Are you referring to noon as the local solar noon, i.e. when the sun is highest in the sky, or are you referring to when the clock reads 12:00? In both cases I can't figure out a way to make "15:00 on the 7th" impossible.)
Also I don't think that the sunrise/sunset times being different throughout the year or that DST exists are indications that the solar cycle is independent of the date. Even if the sunrise/sunset happens at different times of the year, timezones are clearly meant to roughly center the waking day either side of 12:00 on the clock around the solar noon. DST exists to make sure that people get more sun during the afternoon when people are more active, so that both contribute to that the date-rollover point happens when it's dark out and people are less active.